I've been running Civcraft, in one form or another, for more than 5 years now. From high school, all the way through college, during that time I've learned a lot of things, met a few worthwhile people, and continued to strive for my goal. That pie in the sky dream that I wanted to see out of Civcraft.

I wanted to see a game where players actions really mattered, where they created and shaped the societies and worlds they played in, a game that truly had no script. This was always an uphill battle, in 1.0 people thought that the very concept of PrisonPearl was doomed to fail, that there was no way for players to self police griefing and form a worthwhile server.

In 2.0 we fought an uphill battle with the economy, players ran the game world yes, but it was only achieved by allowing players to isolate themselves from the effects of other players actions. If you didn't want to participate in the game world you can just run away. Long story short with very few exceptions players did what they wanted. Society and people where optional, the greatest challenges of the game where scripted by the players own roleplay as opposed to sincere actions.

3.0 is the result of trying to address those issues and truly create an in game economy where politics occurred as a emergent outcome of the game and balance, instead of as a side effect of a few mechanics and roleplay to fill in the gaps. It's here that I find the limit for what players are willing to tolerate in the name of an experiment.

3.0 is hardly dead, the general form of the solution is easy to see, with careful application of additional mechanics and skill up, and a measured reduction in costs such that the tech tree makes an exponential cost curve for linear gains both in combat effectiveness and resource gathering you just might be able to get this all to work perfectly.

But in doing so I will be fighting an uphill battle with a values dissonance between the players and myself that has only grown larger with each iteration. I'm here to run an experiment, to push the bounds of what we can do and figure out what's possible. I try and make a fun game as a secondary goal that I feel I owe to the players assisting me with my experiment.

But now we have found the end of the line, if everything where to go perfectly it would take perhaps another year of concentrated, constant effort, constant grind, on my part and the parts of many others to shape 3.0 into its final form. Then we would be left with the problem of recruiting enough players to make it a workable reality, /r/Minecraft has 500 viewers at any given time, with 100% retention and perfect recruiting (and you all know how crazy it is to assume prefect retention), we still need to find double that somewhere else to really push the dream as far as I would like to go. Minecraft as a development and game community is past its apex, it still has an enormous install base, but to push for enormous expansion a year from now would be folly.

In my mind the experiment is complete, I have learned all that I will and I have seen it through not quite to the end but until I saw the top of the last hill in enough detail to satisfy me.

It's therefore time for me to focus my efforts somewhere else, on another project and another idea. I'm willing to provide technical support to Civcraft, or anyone else willing to try sharding or our plugins, but I'm not willing to invest the time to be head admin any longer. I have no vision for the server beyond this point, no care for its direction, and frankly no interest in ever answering another modmail or moderating another balance discussion ever again.

So the question is now where do you go from here? I've put off retiring for a long time because I couldn't answer that question, it's taken me this long to realize that an answer will never be forthcoming, there will always be another reason to continue until the last player is gone and as much as I feel I owe the players the quality of my administration has suffered and will suffer if I force myself into something that no longer holds my interest. Where things go from here on out is up to the community, I'll help you on your way and then fade into the background, like many of the other experts and developers on Civcraft that you probably don't even know exist much less maintain essential components of the system. Our current primary server lease expires 5 days from now and I have no plans to renew it, moving our existing structure to a smaller server is a pretty minor task, but investing in hosting for a rudderless server seems like a waste of funds.

As for the remaining funds, charity or whatever server people may migrate to after Civcraft are both options, I have turned off auto withdraw on the Paetron so you do not have to be concerned about being charged. There is a chance of finding someone sufficiently skilled and sufficiently motivated to run Civcraft in my stead, but it seems no one left in the administration will touch that with a 10 foot pole.

So, I guess this is it guys, I'm going to miss a lot of you and I can't thank you enough for helping me push this crazy idea I had to its limit, to really see what you could do with this sort of game design. [Redacted] is still in the business of making games and we're in the planning stages of a much smaller, not at all Civcraft related, game. I've got another idea I want to focus on and hopefully you will be hearing more about that in a year or two.

I guess, I don't really know what to say, except

Thank you for your time.

• ttk2